Restoration of "Detour" (The Film Chest) - Tom Neal's fall from grace

Detour Is The Latest Film Restoration From The Film Chest As It Heads To DVD On July 22: The latest film restoration project from the Film Chest was announced this past week and it is none other than director Edgar G. Ulmer’s perfectly-pitched 1945 film noir masterpiece, Detour. It will be available for collectors to savor on July 22.

Although a “poverty row” production, Detour magically rose above its humble roots over the years to be revered as one of the great film noirs… with Ann Savage gaining cult status as the predatory Vera. Tom Neal, well, his star burned brightly during this period until the famous altercation with Franchot Tone over their mutual love affairs with actress Barbara Payton. Source: dvdandblu-rayreleasereport.blogspot.com

"Detour": haunting and creepy, an embodiment of the guilty soul of film noir. No one who has seen it has easily forgotten it. Most critics of “Detour” have taken Al's story at face value: He was unlucky in love, he lost the good girl and was savaged by the bad girl, he was an innocent bystander who looked guilty even to himself. But the critic Andrew Britton argues a more intriguing theory in Ian Cameron's Book of Film Noir. He emphasizes that the narration is addressed directly to us: We're not hearing what happened, but what Al Roberts wants us to believe happened. It's a “spurious but flattering account,” he writes, pointing out that Sue the singer hardly fits Al's description of her, that Al is less in love than in need of her paycheck, and that his cover-up of Haskell's death is a rationalization for an easy theft. For Britton, Al's version illustrates Freud's theory that traumatic experiences can be reworked into fantasies that are easier to live with. Maybe that's why “Detour” insinuates itself so well -why audiences respond so strongly. The jumps and inconsistencies of the narrative are nightmare psychology; Al's not telling a story, but scurrying through the raw materials, assembling an alibi. Source: www.rogerebert.com

Actor Tom Neal wanted to be a star in Hollywood. He hardly came close. Although he was featured in at least 180 Hollywood productions, starting with Out West With the Hardys in 1938, he never really emerged from B-movies. Indeed, he spent virtually all of his career playing macho character roles in films such as Flying Tigers, Behind the Rising Sun and First Yank Into Tokyo.

The closest he got to bigtime fame was his role as the unlucky, star-crossed piano player Al Roberts in the cheapie 1945 noir classic Detour. In that film Neal's character hitches a ride to California to be with his girlfriend, accidentally kills two people and ends up destitute and on the lam. In the last reel, as he is being shoveled into the back of a police car, he intones the classic line: "Fate or some mysterious force can put the finger on you or me for no reason at all." He had no idea at the time how prophetic that line would be. Or that he would be replaying that very same scene 19 years later.

Tom Neal's film career arc began its abrupt slide in 1951. That's when he got into a fist fight with actor Franchot Tone over the affections of sexy, upcoming star Barbara Payton on the front lawn of Payton's Hollywood home. After this scandal Neal and Payton found they couldn't buy a job in Hollywood, which at that time was much more sensitive to the public's opinions about the stars than today. (Ironically, in one of the last pictures either of them made, the 1953 Robert I. Lippert epic The Great Jesse James Raid, Neal and Payton starred together.)

Cathedral City auto dealer Glenn Austin kicked things off by taking out an ad in a local paper soliciting contributions for the Neal defense fund. Local friends of Neal began to send in checks and soon Hollywood, the town that had turned its back on him years before, responded, with celebrities like Mickey Rooney and Blake Edwards, columnist Dorothy Manners and Harrison Carroll, and, ironically, Franchot Tone, the man responsible for Neal's fall from grace, all contributing to the fund. Throughout the trial Barbara Payton had been in the gallery and she and Neal waved to each other. That was the last time they would ever see each other again. Neal was paroled from prison on December 6, 1971, after serving seven years. He moved to Hollywood, the scene of his rise and fall, and died there of natural causes a year later at the age of 59. The famous line from Detour resonates: Fate or some mysterious force had put the finger on Tom Neal for no good reason at all. Source: www.palmspringslife.com